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Mahashwetha:
A Jouney from Objectification to Subjectification
………………………………………………………………………….……………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………….

S. Yasmeenbanu
Assistant Professor of English
St. Joseph’s College (Autonomous)
Tiruchirappalli

Abstract
The paper attempts to study the unique problems of Indian women, in the context
of economic deprivation. Sudha Murthy, an active social activist, author of the
novel Mahashwetha (2007) presents her central character Anupama, a slave of
emotions, a victim of the Indian patriarchal society bound by customs and
conditions. When Anupama is identified of leukoderma, she was deserted by her
husband and her mother-in-law. She was mercilessly driven away from her
mother in law’s house. Though her father takes care of her, her step mother barbs
her due to the poor life condition prevails in her father’s home. When all her
hopes end, she determines to rebuild her life without anybody’s support, against
all the oddities. Anupama’s struggle represents the condition of many Indian
women in similar context, thus the character is a metaphor of many women who
struggle to live a meaningful independent life. Though many scholars have
written research articles on problems of women, this paper is, unique hence it
focuses on how a woman’s beauty and body is commoditized in the marriage
market, in India. In addition to the social relevance, to bring about the critical
significance, Simon De Beauvior’s ideas from ‘The Second Sex’ also would be
discussed in this article.
Key words: patriarchal society, leukoderma and commoditized.

1. Introduction
Padma Shri, Sudha Murthy is an active social worker and a feminist, writes in
Kannada and English. She got her B.E. Degree and had been a chairperson of the
Infosys Foundation for some time. She worked in different places of India. She
actively participates in different social works like, health care camps, education
and empowerment of women, public hygiene, art and culture and poverty all
alleviation. She has set at least 50,000 libraries, built 10,000 public toilets, 2300
houses for the poor and needy. She has received ‘Attimabbe Award’ from the
government of Karnataka and on the whole she is a recipient of 18 different
awards for her social works.

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Sudha Murthy has witnessed much of the problems pertaining to women in the
society from her own experience in different places of India, so she established a
trust and started doing social works, which proves that her writings, and creations
of characters are not only imaginary but also they are the real life characters
whom she might have met in her real times. In her novels namely, Gently Falls
Bakula, Dollar Bahu and The House of Cards, she focuses the insensitive attitude
of men towards women.
2. The outline story of the novel
The outline of the novel is given to make the reading of the article more
comfortable and meaning making. Anupama, a poor middle-class girl’s fairy tale
marriage to Anand breaks apart, when her mother-in-law discovers, by chance, a
white leukodermic patch on her foot. Abandoned by her uncaring, selfish,
insensitive and irresponsible in-laws and husband, she is forced to return to her
father’s home in the village. The social stigma of a married woman living with
her parents in India, her stepmother’s continual barbs and the ostracism that
accompanies her skin condition force her to contemplate suicide. At that moment,
she realizes the value of her life, which is indeed an epiphanic moment in her life.
Determined to rebuild her life against all odds, Anupama accepts the invitation
from her friend to live in Bombay, undergoes a lot of hardships, at the end she is
successful, reaches a respectable position, gains promise of an enduring
friendship and rebuilds her life against all difficulties.
2.1 Ugly woman and Beautiful woman
Sudha Murthy very dexterously pictures the condition of a typical ‘Ugly Indian
woman’ who was ruled by the patriarchal order as well women dominance whose
wounded spirit remains helpless. She does not only present a victim through her
novel, she concentrates on the rebuild of woman which proves the readers the real
activist spirit in the author.
Around the world, from Cleopatra to actress Ishwarya Roy, beauty brings fortune
in the lives of women. It means woman’s beauty has an immense role in her social
and personal life. Even in fairy tales, beautiful girls were liked by the Princes’
and they become very prosperous and live a more contented life. On the
otherhand the ugly looking or ordinary looking women, live poor lives. In the
famous Tale of Cinderella when she was shabby looking nobody liked her, when
she was beautiful she was liked by the Prince of the country. Similarly, Anupama
gets surprisingly prosperous and happy married life when she was beautiful in the
novel, and looses everything as she was affected by leukoderma. Mary
Wollstonecraft an early feminist writes in Frankenstein chapter 23, “Nothing is
as painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” Thus, Anupama
is shocked by the change of color of her skin which changes her life suddenly.
As a humanist, the novelist has profound concern for the women. She tries to tell
the readers that women like Anupama should not be neglected for their loss of
physical beauty. Women should be treated at least as a fellow human being. So,
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she presents her heroine a fighting woman against all the unjust norms of the
social order including a woman should be beautiful.
3. Simon De Beauvoir’s Theory
Simon De Beauvoir in ‘The Second Sex’ theorises the role of the female body in
social life of a woman. She says “to be present in the world implies strictly that
there exists a body which is at once a material thing in the world and a point of
view towards the world” (Beauvoir 39). She further discusses that men
considering themselves essential being or ‘default’, has treated woman as the
unessential being or ‘other’. She talks about the ‘everlasting disappointment’ of
woman and concludes that men and women despite of their differences should
affirm a mutual respect relationship. Mary Wollstonecraft in The Vindication of
the Rights of Women says “I do not wish women to have power over men, but
over themselves.”
In the beginning of the novel, Anupama was presented by the author as a woman
of beauty and attraction, she was presented as a module ‘of Feminine’ in this
given critical category. The author presented her like a fairy girl, where things
around Anupama were ideal and beautiful until her marriage with Anand. She
was presented in a way where her beauty is focused more than the person in her.
Anupama is objectified by Anand and his family members, as in Coventry
Patmore’s long poem ‘Angel in the House’. The poem reads like this:
Man must be pleased; but him to please
Is woman’s pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
She cast her best, she flings herself
Similarly, at the first sight, Anand falls in love with her beauty, sweet voice and
charms without any consideration for her character and inner heart. He shows a
lot of interest in meeting her, talking to her and marries her irrespective of his
mother’s telling not to marry Anupama. ‘Clad in a deep red sari, she reminded
him of a beautiful rose’ (12). Even her marriage is mentioned as a ‘fairy tale’
marriage by the author. ‘Anupama feels as though she was in the midst of a fairy
tale’ (35). It means that the marriage is not a real-time marriage but it is
dreamlike, above the reality.
A few months after the departure of Anand to London for his master degree in
medicine, Anupama is expecting him to invite her to go to London soon. She was
waiting for the visa and other formalities but to her shock, the white patches in
her leg make her life dark. She was driven away from home by her in-laws when
they find the white patches in her leg. She was eagerly expecting her husband to
understand her and to be invited by Anand to live in London and that could be an
escape from the present poor conditions of her life. She writes a series of letters
to Anand but he did not reply to her. When Anupama understands that Anand has
abandoned her, the life becomes miserable. Anupama lost her hopes in everything

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and everyone. She is very critical about the silence of Anand and understands his
irresponsible nature. Now she realises the role of leukoderma in her life. It gives
her another understanding that she was loved and married by Anand only for the
external charm.
3.1 Elaine Showalter’s Theory
Elaine Showalter says, “women reject both imitation and protest – two forms of
dependency – and turn instead to female experience as the source of an
autonomous art, extending the feminist analysis of culture to the forms and
techniques of literature” (qtd. in Krishma Chaudhary).
When Anupama realises the irresponsible and body loving attitude of Anand, she
breaks up in to pieces, tries to commit suicide but somehow, overcomes even the
suicidal instinct. At that time, she receives a letter from one of her friends
Sumithra. Sumithra invites her to Bombay and suggests her to take up a job there.
Anupama makes use of this opportunity and goes to Bombay and take up a simple
job. Here again her friend’s husband tries to misuse her for his sexual pleasure.
That the author tries to portray that the men do not want an ugly woman in their
lives to marry and live but for sexual relationship anybody is consumable and any
disease is okay for the majority of men. Overcoming the troubles caused by Hari,
she finds a new job and new place to live. As the novel moves, she becomes more
confident, takes up a decent job and earns well which makes her self-sufficed.
She sends money to her father, even forgets about spreading of the patches in her
body. She keeps a good friendship with the right spirited men, like Vasanth and
Giri since she is matured in her understanding of men, she does not compare them
with either Anand or Hari. At the end of the novel, she becomes a professor in a
college; training and teaching art that actually wonder the readers.
4. Findings
The novelist takes her characters from object or ‘Angel women’ metaphor to
subject or ‘female’ position. The author pictures how women are treated like an
object or commodity; women are considered just the possession of men in the
society. The men want to show off to their world that they have got a beautiful
wife. In The Dark Room by R.K. Narayanan the hero Ramani takes pride in taking
his beautiful wife to public places but treats very differently at home. So, it is an
evident through the novel Mahaswetha, that men take pride in having a beautiful
wife. Anupama symbolises, the trauma of any woman who is a victim in similar
life condition, when a woman becomes an ‘ugly woman’, her life becomes
miserable.
5. Conclusion
The paper proves that women are treated as an object of men’s choice in India
and the situation becomes worse when the women lose their beauty on various
reasons. There are signs like Anupama who fights against the unjustifiable
attitude of men and creates an independent life and become a successful woman.

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Anupama’s character is a prototype of many Indian women who are fighting and
moving forward, towards a better life in spite of the hardships they encounter.
References
1. Murthy, Sudha, Mahashweta. New Delhi, India: Penguin Books India Pvt.
Ltd., 2007. Print.
2. Chaudhary, Krishma. Elaine Showalter’s Critical Examination of The Essay
- “Feminist Criticism in Wilderness”, Research Journal of English
Language and Literature (RJELAL), Vol.1, Issue 4, 2013. Pdf.
3. Kapur Manju, ‘A Married Woman’, Penguin Pub., New Delhi, 2002, p. 23.
4. Abrams, M. H. 1912. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. Fort Worth; India:
Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1999.
5. Murty, Sudha, Gently Falls Bakula. New Delhi: Penguin Books India Pvt.
Ltd., 2008. Print. pp. 161 & 162.
6. Murty, Sudha, Mahashweta. New Delhi, India: Penguin Books India Pvt.
Ltd., 2007. Print.
7. Beauvoir, Simon de. The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books 1989,
c 1952. Print.
8. Frankenstein: The 1818 Text. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Print.
9. http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/articles/global-issues-gender-equality-and
womens-empowerme
10. Mahashweta - Wikipedia - the free encyclopaedia <Wikipedia Org/Wik/
Mahashweta >.web

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